17. The God That Limps

Every day in so many ways all of us benefit from advances in technology. So much so that thirty or so years ago some Western social commentators predicted technology would ultimately solve all our problems. The author of this extract tells us that the higher price we pay today for technological advances is calling such optimism into doubt.

Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire and metal working, had a pronounced limp. Entrusted with the development and maintenance of many key technologies, Hephaestus was responsible for keeping society running smoothly and perfectly. Yet he was, ironically, the only imperfect member of the pantheon of classical gods. This ancient irony is compounded by current attitudes toward Hephaestus' crafts. Technology is the focus of much public respect, for it is often seen as the chief hope for solving the numerous problems facing society—a hope embodied in the oft-heard lament, "If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they ... ?" Yet, at the same time, many of the ills of the modern world, from pollution to the threat of nuclear Armageddon, are frequently blamed on technological developments. As in Hephaestus himself, the power and versatility of technology are often spoiled by disastrous defects.

There is, consequently, a good deal of ambivalence and uncertainty about technology and its role in society. The past decade has witnessed an intense and at times bitter debate about the nature and direction of technological developments. No longer are the fruits of technology received with unquestioning faith. Instead, battle lines have formed around many prominent technological ventures and the foundations of technological society have come under intense attack from a variety of critics.

This debate ebbed and flowed during the seventies, as a series of shocks ran through the global economy and as serious social problems surfaced in almost every country. As these economic and social problems deepened, it gradually became clear that fundamental changes would be needed in the coming years as the world moves from an era of rapid economic growth and relatively abundant energy and material resources into a more uncertain period. Technological change has become urgent in many areas. It is thus not surprising that an intense debate has erupted over the contribution of technology both to the problems facing the world and to their potential resolution.

The growing doubts about the nature and direction of technological change are a far cry from the technological optimism that reigned in the fifties and early sixties. In those exciting days, technology seemed to hold the key to a prosperous new world. The global economy was booming, humans were making their first tentative ventures into space, the Green Revolution seemed to promise a solution to the world food problem, and nuclear power was being proclaimed as a source of cheap, clean energy. It was a period when, as former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall has properly put it, "there were no problems, only solutions" and when misgivings about technological developments could easily be brushed aside.

There can be little real doubt that the steady stream of innovations produced in the past few decades has brought immense benefit to society. By virtually every measure, people are better clothed, housed, educated, and fed than they were a generation or so ago. New medical knowledge has led to the control of a host of infectious diseases, transportation and communications technologies have shrunk the planet, new agricultural and industrial processes have boosted productivity to unprecedented heights, and a wealth of new scientific findings have immeasurably enriched human culture. The Good Old Days, when disease, hunger, and backbreaking toil were everyday experiences, seem good only when viewed through the distorting lens of nostalgia.

But the benefits of these technological advances are at least partially offset by serious social and environmental costs, among which pollution, energy shortages, and growing dependence on nonrenewable resources are the most obvious. Moreover, technological skills have proven impotent in the face of such problems as urban decay, poverty, unemployment, racial conflict, and disintegrating family structures. Indeed, many aspects of technological change have aggravated such problems.

In poor countries, too, the benefits of new technologies have been counterbalanced by heavy social costs. In the postwar years, when many former colonies achieved political independence, the accepted path to prosperity lay in raising economic growth rates as swiftly as possible. The transformation of agriculture and industry by technologies imported from the industrial countries was widely regarded as the open sesame to "rich-country" status. It has become clear, however, that these policies have brought little benefit to many of the world's poorest people: while economic growth rates have increased as expected in many developing countries, poverty, underemployment, and their attendant miseries have also increased. The Green Revolution has raised grain yields, for example, but malnutrition is still a fact of life and death for hundreds of millions of people—a hard fact that technical fixes alone cannot solve complex social problems.

These tangible social and environmental costs explain some of the current feelings of ambivalence about modern technology. But there are other, deeper concerns. Among them is the wide-spread and deep-seated feeling that technology is out of control, that technological developments have a momentum of their own that is difficult, if not impossible, for individuals to influence. Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson summed up this feeling in a speech in 1973, when he complained that technology is "running over people's lives". Ironically, a decade earlier, Wilson had led the Labour Party to victory with a campaign pledge to forge Britain's prosperity in the "white heat of technological revolution". So much for the technological optimism of the early sixties.

The notion that technology is out of control has diverse roots. It stems in part from the very complexity of industrial society, in which most people are made to play relatively small roles in large economic organizations. The centralization of decision making in governments and giant corporations has deprived individuals of a real role in shaping policies that affect their lives—not only in the realm of technology, but in other areas as well. Beyond that, however, there is the inescapable fact that most technologies that intimately affect everyday life, from power plants to automobiles, are highly complex. Consequently, many people find their lives shaped by technologies that they do not understand and over which they have little control.

Government bureaucracies and large corporations account for most of the global expenditures on research and development, and they have the resources to take innovations from the laboratory bench through the testing stage and into widespread use. They are thus the prime actors in the development and application of new technologies. Public influence over this process is exercised chiefly through purchasing power in the marketplace—which is itself shaped by the advertising budgets of the industries that develop new technologies—and through political pressures in the halls of government. Usually, however, public influence is limited to attempts to curb the use of technologies that are already well along the path to development, such as nuclear power or supersonic transportation; there is little opportunity for individuals to have much impact on the processes that lead to the generation of new technologies.

Developing countries, moreover, are in an especially weak position to influence the direction of technological change, though they are fundamentally affected by it. Because they have little technological capacity of their own, most developing countries import technologies for their industrial and agricultural development, paying large sums of money for the technologies they acquire and becoming technologically dependent on the industrial countries. And, since those technologies are developed in the economic and cultural climate of the industrial world, they are not always well suited to the Third World's most pressing needs.

The technological revolution of the past few decades thus seems like a Faustian bargain to many people—economic and material progress bought at the expense of growing dependence on nonrenewable resources, of environmental deterioration, and of loss of control over many aspects of everyday life. And the terms of the bargain seem to be quickly deteriorating as the world enters the final two decades of the twentieth century.

From The God That Limps: Science and Technology in the Eighties.

New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1981.